Social media as marketing for the small business. Getting outside help...

[78fca]

Hi,

I use Facebook and Instagram to engage with my customers and I find the more I do on these platforms, the more I sell on my website. It really does work, the only problem I am having is time to do it.

I have my phone with me at all times in my workshop and I take pictures of us working and of products we make throughout the day, to keep customers interested and wanting to see more. I use Facebook ads, which also crosses over to Instagram, and I see a good return on these ads.

My question is, what outside help for social media would you guys recommend a small business like mine, gets? I have to take the pictures and write the content as anything written by anyone else wouldn't sound like me ( my business is named after me ) but there is only so much I can do in a day as we have to make the products and everything else that needs doing in a business.

I want to use social media to help grow my business further but I am unsure what the best way to go is.

Looking forward to any advice!

 

[antropy]

You could enlist a consultant or agency to help? Or you could recruit someone to help with the sales and marketing, which in turn would help grow your business even more! Alex

 

[fisicx]

I want to use social media to help grow my business further but I am unsure what the best way to go is.

How much can your business grow?

Could you double production? Could you employ 100 people and make thousands of products every day? If you started mass production would you lose the people who like the cottage industry way you do things?

Paying someone to promote the business on SM might end up bringing in too much work. So it might be worth doing some sums and working out how much growth you can cope with.

 

[antropy]

So it might be worth doing some sums and working out how much growth you can cope with.

Yes, don't do any marketing until you're sure you can cope with double the work! * facepalm*

Please do not listen to that advice. Market all you can and if you are in the good position of having too much work, employ people to do it!

Paul

 

[fisicx]

Please do not listen to that advice. Market all you can and if you are in the good position of having too much work, employ people to do it!

Doesn't work like that. You need to know you have the capacity to increase production. Lets say for example the workshop has room for 10 people. To double production you now need room for 20 people which means renting a bigger workshop. You need to do the maths first.

Any number of businesses planed an increase in production and then found after a lot of investment it just wasn't sustainable.

 

[antropy]

Doesn't work like that.

Yes it does, you get as busy as you can with your current team and then expand your team and premises as needed. How do I know? I've done it.

Paul

 

[fisicx]

Doing Opencart stuff? That's a lot different to expanding a manufacturing business (which is what the OP has).

I'm not suggesting the OP doesn't plan for growth - it's just that moving in to a new factory can be a lot more expensive and complex than setting up a new office. I know because I've done it.

On the other hand, if the OP already has the means to expand the business without moving and has ready access to trained staff then it's all good.

 

[antropy]

Doing Opencart stuff? That's a lot different to expanding a manufacturing business (which is what the OP has).

True that's a very fair point, they would need to invest more in machinery as well presumably so it's probably even harder to scale than a service business like web development - which is hard to scale as finding talented developers is very hard, especially outside London and Brighton.

Going back to the OP and social media, here's an example of a really well done facebook page for an engineering company:
https://www.facebook.com/bmrperformanceltd/

Paul

 

[78fca]

Thank you to you who have replied.

I have spoken to a couple of social media management companies today, one offers advice sessions/mentoring and also full management of SEO and social media pages. The full management is quite a lump of money for me as a business atm , £500 P/M plus ad costs ( I know when its generating its own money its all great) so its trying to find somewhere in between that I think would be helpful. Being kept in the loop so you know what is going on but they handle some of the in depth stuff sounds like a good idea.

We have a store on shopify (80% of our business) that gives some quite in depth analytics as well as FB ads.

With regards to too much work, we are in the lucky position to have a lot of work on most of the time, I was working at an 8 week waiting list ( we make leather goods) all the time for about 2 years which was quite a bit of pressure with customers always pressuring you, but the member of staff I have in the workshop has helped a lot and has helped keep on top of stock levels and do some of the donkey work. He was a good investment.

Its always a juggling act as a small business, I only have one employee so it really is small. Wearing many hats is ok, its just trying to find which ones are the best ones the wear!

Thanks everyone

 

[MEAVO]

@78fca just a naive question from my side, but if you have such a massive backlog and customers are pressuring you, why don't you hire another person? Is it hard to find someone with the right skills? Could you get an apprentice? Especially if you're gonna ramp up Marketing it could get even busier. Or your backlog isn't big enough to justify another hire? Getting another person would also free up some time for social media.

One more question if you don't mind: How do you know that SM is working well for you? Are you tracking clicks all the way to the purchase confirmation or just clicks to landing on your website? We also tried FB / Instagram ads, didn't do much (perhaps also cause we're B2B).

 

[78fca]

@MEAVO the 8 week waiting list was before my first member of staff, now things are easier. We also raised the prices on some of the handsewn bespoke items, which helped massively. It reduced the volume of orders but we make more profit now. Something I never thought would happen when you are in that rut

I know social media is working for me as I track the customers all they way to their purchase from the advert. My business is B2C so it could be a little different from yours, for example I sell to people sat browsing the internet when the kids have gone to bed, spending a little bit of money on themselves or their hobby which I would imagine is probably a different kind of shopping to how your customers do it. Neat product by the way!

The member of staff does help free up time, but I think you always fill your time with more work, and also the more you know about online marketing, I think it is a bit of a rabbit hole!

 

[MEAVO]

Understood, I'm happy social media seems to work for you!

I guess it just comes down to a cost / benefit analysis. Paying a social media company £500 a month will free up X hours of your time (assuming they do a good job and drive the same amount of sales as you currently do). What is the saved time worth to you? Do you think you can generate more than £X in sales (don't know what your margins are)? Of course some can have a non-monetary value too - e.g. spending more time with family / friends, less stress => better health, etc.

 

[Julia Sta Romana]

With social media marketing, a lot of people have this misconception that more is better.

But in reality, you don't have to post multiple times a day. Once or twice is often enough, the important thing is that you offer quality posts.

If you want to maintain some control over your social media marketing, you can still create the content and delegate the scheduling to someone else. You can stock up on posts when you have the time and have someone schedule it to spread them out. A social media staff can make your posts more effective by posting on times and days with more engagement and recommend posts that can be boosted for promotions or ads.

 

[MEAVO]

With social media marketing, a lot of people have this misconception that more is better.

But in reality, you don't have to post multiple times a day. Once or twice is often enough, the important thing is that you offer quality posts.

If you want to maintain some control over your social media marketing, you can still create the content and delegate the scheduling to someone else. You can stock up on posts when you have the time and have someone schedule it to spread them out. A social media staff can make your posts more effective by posting on times and days with more engagement and recommend posts that can be boosted for promotions or ads.

There are plenty of post scheduling tools that can help.

 

[AttentionAgency]

78fca, you are obviously doing a great job to date with your social media activity if you are seeing a direct impact on your sales. That alone will make it easier for a social media / content company to take the reins and free up your time. There is already a content strategy in place that works. It can probably be improved after some consideration and analysis.
Once a strategy is in place, a content calendar can be created and a programme for testing, evaluating and improving.

 

[ls0709]

I've skimmed through the thread so apologies if my reply covers stuff mentioned.

I also run a business that generates a significant amount of it's work from social media. Personally, I like the control over what is posted and being in control of it myself.

As I'm sure you'd agree, a lot of the work with social media is responding to people and the way in which I reply is one of the key things to my business, we go above and beyond the sort of response that potential customers will get elsewhere and I personally, couldn't trust an agency to replicate that side of things.

Do you have any staff that you could train to deal with the day to day work such as posting and replying so you can just schedule a handful of hours a week in for the ad side of things?

 

[Joe_davidson]

Hire an apprentice.

Outsourcing it, won't have the same impact.

The person needs to understand the products, customers and competitors.

 

[Eugene Hill]

Well If you are already doing good with your own little efforts, then let me warn you against getting greedy or over-optimistic! The guys whom you would hire may not know your business that well. And they may screw your brand image with their attempt to justify their salary.
Hiring someone or a company to take care of your social campaigns - may negatively impact your business.
Wondering How?
They may flood-in the number of posts per day. This looks unprofessional at the very core. It is unethical as well. So If you are really sure about their expertise then only you should think of handing your work to them. Otherwise please don't. They generally do the flooding thing to justify the money they earn through you.
The closing thought from my side is that too many social posts per day are never needed at the first place. This is what I know! It looks unprofessional and negatively impacts the brand image, as I have earlier said.

 

[AllUpHere]

As @Eugene Hill points out, you need to be really careful getting help with social media. Most people of firms offering such services aren't exactly the sharpest tools in the box, and could just as easily ruin what you have already done.
Better, in my opinion, to work on your marketing strategy generally and let that guide your social media efforts.

 

[ViktorijaS]

Doesn't work like that. You need to know you have the capacity to increase production. Lets say for example the workshop has room for 10 people. To double production you now need room for 20 people which means renting a bigger workshop. You need to do the maths first.

Any number of businesses planed an increase in production and then found after a lot of investment it just wasn't sustainable.

You need to be sure you will be getting more customers before you invest a large amount. It is important to first do your research of what workshops are available, how quickly you could rent before you invest a large amout. If renting a workshop would not be an issue within a short period of time, there is no need to be in a rush; spend your time ensuring you get more customer in the first place.

 

[Nochexman]

My question is, what outside help for social media would you guys recommend a small business like mine, gets?

Little bit left field, but if you believe that your social media activity is making such a profound difference, why don't you recruit someone to do more of your other work so that you can spend a little more time on promoting your business?

You would not be the first successful businessperson to outgrow their original role and become a PR ambassador! Good luck.

 

[Usman Aslam]

What is your business growing rate through social media platforms?
For fast growing business through social media search engine you simply need digital marketing services.